Words in Deep Blue

I’m definitely not in love with Henry anymore, and it’s a relief. He smells the same – peppermint and cedar and a hint of old books. He sounds the same – gentle and funny. But I don’t get that same feeling. I don’t think about kissing him. I’m not fixated on his hair. I’m cured.

You’re having a really bad week? I think after I leave him at the bar. A really bad week ends in death, Henry. I don’t know what’s happened to you this week, but unless it involves death, it’s really not that bad.

Lola and Hiroko are onstage. I focus on them to take my mind off Henry. They’re playing a cover of Cat Power’s ‘Good Woman’. They’ve made it their own with Lola’s blue gravel voice and the sweet steel of Hiroko’s percussion. Hiroko’s taller than Lola, not shy but quiet. They finished each other’s sentences in Year 9, but tonight they’re speaking separately – their lines of music circle and add to the other. They’re starring in a dream up there, and I’m happy for them, but I can’t help wondering why some people get what they want and why some people don’t.

I take a photograph and send it to Rose; I send it to Mum, too, because a text means I can get away with not calling her tonight. She’ll be at the beach by now, and I don’t want to hear the ocean in the background. I turn off my phone and get lost in the music and the light-spattered club.

The set ends after a while. Lola and Hiroko climb down from the stage. Lola takes Hiroko’s water bottle, drinks from it, and hands it back to her. ‘Thank you,’ Hiroko says.

‘You’re welcome,’ Lola tells her, then turns to me and points at the bar. ‘Henry’s drinking.’

‘Amy dumped him and now they’re not going overseas and she’s here somewhere with Greg Smith.’

‘Amy’s always dumping him,’ Hiroko says, and Lola confirms it’s a regular occurrence.

‘We’ve got more sets to play,’ she says ‘so you need to look after him. If you still want me to forgive you, that is.’

They get back on stage to talk about the next set, and I push my way through the crowd. Henry’s gone by the time I get to the bar but I look around and locate him stumbling across towards Amy.

‘I think Shakespeare might need some help,’ the girl behind the bar says, and puts out her hand. ‘I’m Katia.’

‘I know. Shakespeare told me about you,’ she says, opening and closing her hands, imitating Henry’s mouth going on and on about me. ‘He missed you,’ she tells me, and I like the thought. I really like the thought of him telling Katia just how much he missed me.

‘Amy’s no good for him,’ Katia says as we watch him rambling on in front of her and Greg. ‘He’s a nice guy. He tutored me for free in English.’

Henry is a nice guy. He might be hopelessly in love with a girl I don’t like. He might have been a coward three years ago. But apart from not knowing what to do when I confessed my love for him, he’s never actually let me down.

Greg pushes him. It’s more of a tap, really, but it’s enough to send Henry backwards to the floor. It’s hard to watch, so Katia closes her eyes for a second. I keep mine open. When it comes down to it, even after everything that’s happened, in a fight between Greg and Henry, I’m on Henry’s side.

Get up, I think. Get up and walk away from her. Tell her she’s not worth the ground you’ve fallen on. He doesn’t. I don’t think he can. He’s too unsteady on his feet.

Before I can change my mind, I cross the room. I tell myself it’s what any person would do for another person, whether they’re fighting or not. I’d planned on it being a quick exercise. I’d planned on heaving him up and leaving. He’s too heavy, though, and he’s not helping himself.

Greg and his friends are laughing, Amy’s laughing too, so I lean in and say quietly, so only he can hear, ‘You want her back?’

‘I do. I really, really do,’ he says, and I resist the urge to kick him into an upright position. Instead, I lean close to his ear, and say firmly, ‘Then get up and stop being so pathetic.’

He frowns, but he puts his arm around my shoulder and together we manage to get him in a standing position. I help him to a chair, but he’s in no state to walk, so I look around for someone to help me carry him home. Lola and Hiroko still have at least another couple of sets before they’re done.

I’m not asking Amy. I’ve decided to ignore her. It’s been a long time since the conversation in the bathroom, a long time since Henry chose her over me, a long time since I’ve loved Henry. It’s none of my business if he’s still making an idiot of himself over her.

It has been a long time, but it turns out I do still have some things to say. I leave the hair comment for now, because I couldn’t care less what she thinks about the way I look. I skip straight to the point. ‘Guys might like you. Many guys might like you. But you’re not good enough for Henry. You have never been good enough for Henry.’

‘You still like him,’ she says, and it makes me angry, but not for the same reason it did three years ago. I don’t like him anymore, not like that. But he doesn’t deserve this and I don’t need it. ‘He’s my best friend,’ I tell her. ‘And I have a job in the bookstore as of today, so from now on I’ll be looking out for him.’

I do a few loops of the club but I can’t see him. Despite my changed hair, some people from school recognise me and I’m caught talking to them. Emily, Aziza and Beth want to know what I’m studying. I don’t admit to failing because that will lead to the bigger story that I don’t want to tell. And even if I did end up telling it, I wouldn’t want to be shouting the news about Cal over music in a club. Instead, I tell them I’m taking a year off to save some money, but yes, I got into university and I’m going to major in science with a view to becoming a marine biologist. Their lives have gone as planned – Emily’s studying the stars, Aziza’s interested in environmental law and Beth is thinking about pre-med.

Before the conversation can go any further I tell them I’m looking for Henry and ask if they’ve seen him. They haven’t, so I keep moving. I walk fast, avoiding people I recognise or people who look like they recognise me.

After about half an hour I give up, thinking Henry must have stumbled home. I make a last stop in the bathroom before leaving, and I’m washing my hands when I hear drunken poetry being recited from inside the end cubicle.

I walk down, push open the door, and there he is, lying on the ground, his head between the wall and the bowl. ‘Do you mind? I’m having a private moment here, Rachel.’

I crouch on the floor beside him. ‘Here’s a tip for a private moment: don’t have it on the floor of the girls’ toilets.’

He lifts his head and squints at the unit in the opposite corner. ‘Not a mailbox?’

‘Not a mailbox, Henry,’ I say, as I try, unsuccessfully, to haul him into a standing position.

‘You’re right. Dead would be better than this. Amy is with Greg Smith. The love of my life is, as we speak, kissing a moron.’

‘Henry, if the love of your life is kissing a moron, it’s probably time to reassess whether or not she’s the love of your life.’

He makes a little head movement to indicate I may have a point, and then takes my hand and struggles himself into a standing position. We stay here for a while, holding each other, while he gains his balance.

‘You know, Amy always smells, just faintly, of washing powder. She breathes her fringe up and it drifts back down like a tiny parachute. Years from now, washing powder and documentaries on sky divers will still give me a hard-on.’

‘Don’t feel you have to talk. I’m really very comfortable with the quiet,’ I tell him as we walk out of the toilets and towards the exit.

‘Sleep it off, Shakespeare,’ Katia calls on our way past, and Henry gives her a wave. Before we leave, I see what he hasn’t noticed: Amy on the other side of the bar, watching the two of us. I’d bet any money that Henry looks more attractive to Amy the second he’s with someone else.

‘You’re an idiot, Henry,’ I say, and he refuses to answer on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.

The night’s still warm, the heat trapped in concrete as well as sky. Henry’s leaning on my shoulder with all his weight, which would have been fine ten months ago, when I was fit enough to swim two kilometres in the ocean, but now my arms are aching.

It’s Friday night, and there’s no clear break in the traffic, so I have to walk us the long way to the bookstore, via the pedestrian lights. Henry talks to every local he sees. He’s got quite a lot to say about Amy and The Dickhead. I try pulling him away but there’s no moving Henry when he’s in the middle of a rant, so when he starts on about Amy to a couple walking their Great Dane, I sit on a bench and wait while he gets it all out. His arms spread wide to demonstrate the size of his love for Amy and narrow to demonstrate the size of Greg’s brain.

‘This,’ he says, pointing in my direction, ‘is my long-lost, best friend, Rachel Sweetie. Rachel and I haven’t spoken in a while,’ he says. ‘Because she didn’t miss me. She left town without waking me up. She left my Gaiman out in the rain.’

It’s hard to believe that even drunk, Henry’s still carrying on with the lie, I think as the couple leave, and he sways his way to me and the bench. He keeps opening and shutting his right eye like he’s trying to get a clear picture. ‘You’ve come back rude and gorgeous,’ he says, and leans his head on my shoulder.

‘Neither did Audrey Hepburn,’ he says, and leaves the bench to lie on the nature strip. ‘I just need to rest a while. You can go. I’m nearly home.’

I consider leaving but the thought of going back to the warehouse isn’t all that appealing so I decide to lie next to him. His arm touches mine, and there’s that familiar warmth.

I never planned on ignoring Henry forever, just until he wrote saying he was sorry he’d ignored my letter. I just needed him to tell me he was flattered, but he didn’t feel the same way. My plan was to forgive him, as soon as he told the truth.

‘Why?’ he asks again tonight. ‘I mean we were best friends. And I know for a fact that you wrote to Lola.’ He turns his head to the side so our faces are almost touching. ‘Why?’

Henry’s a terrible liar and even if he wasn’t, he’s so drunk that only truth is spilling out of him. ‘You didn’t get the letter,’ I say, wondering how that’s possible since he looks in the Prufrock almost every day, and even if he didn’t, I left a note in his book.

‘What letter?’ he asks, and I know that however it happened, that letter went missing. It’s possible Henry picked up his book and the letter dropped out. It’s possible someone took the letter from the Letter Library before he got to it.

He’s drunk and thinking slowly, so it’s not hard to stall for time. I stare at the sky, pick at the grass, all the while I’m thinking of the right thing to say. He wrote me so many letters, long and Henry-like letters, and I wanted to answer every one but I didn’t. Instead I imagined how hurt he’d feel when he found out I was writing to Lola and not him.

I almost tell him. I should tell him, so he knows I didn’t forget him. But I have a second chance to save face and it actually doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve moved on. ‘It was just a goodbye letter. I left it for you at the counter of the bookstore but I guess it went missing.’

‘Look,’ I say to end this whole line of conversation. ‘I got busy. I fell in love. I was preoccupied with school and new friends. But I should have written, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

‘I did,’ I say, and at the same time I tell myself not to do something stupid and cry and tell him how desperate I was to see him at the funeral. I try not to think about how I could have had him there with me if I’d listened to Cal and not been so stubborn.

‘Good friends,’ I say, and as proof, which he seems to need, I tell him I’m taking the job at the bookstore.

I ask what he means, and he tells me that tonight, he voted to sell. ‘It solves all my problems. We sell the shop. I get some money. Amy and I travel, and when we move back I can afford to rent my own place. No more making-out in the self-help section.’

You’re something now, I think. ‘Be sure,’ I say, and he says the one thing he’s sure about is Amy.

I know it’s time to get up because Henry starts reciting poetry again. I get my poetry from two places – school and Henry – so I haven’t heard any for a while. The last poem I heard in Henry’s voice was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Tonight it’s one I don’t know.

The words drop, drunk and heavy, and I see the poem as Henry speaks it– a raining world, a hiding sun, a person fighting to love the terrible days. He tells me it’s called ‘Dark August’, and it’s by Derek Walcott.

Henry believes in the impossible, the same way Cal did. He thinks he can find the copy of that book against all odds.

He recites the poem one more time because I ask him. There’s something in it that I need to find. An answer, maybe, to how it’s done, how a person starts living again. I don’t find it. All the poem does is make me ache, in places unlocatable.

‘I need to go home,’ I say, but Henry’s too drunk for me to explain to him why that’s no longer possible.

There’s still a light on inside the bookstore and it gives the place a soft glow. I’ve always loved it here. I loved the polished floorboards and the deep rich wood of the shelves. I loved the way the spines of the books looked, neatly aligned, one next to the other. I loved it because here I could always find Henry.

I ring the bell and, while I wait, I look at the front window. There’s the seat where George always sat reading with Ray Bradbury on her knee. The books in the window form a new display – Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Simmone Howell, Fiona Wood, Nam Le – and I’ve read none of them.

I look closely at the book in the centre of the window – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. At the bottom of the pink cover is a small typewriter with paper flying out, the paper turning into clouds as it rises. I can’t name what it makes me feel; sadness, maybe, at the pointlessness of an atlas for clouds – an atlas for things that move from minute to minute.

Michael comes to the door with Frederick. ‘Lucky I was here playing Scrabble,’ Frederick says, as they take Henry off my hands. I follow with the wallet and keys that have fallen from his pocket.

‘Amy’s going out with Greg Smith,’ I say to explain why Henry’s drunk. ‘I found him in the girls’ toilets.’

‘In my defence, I was too drunk to know it was the girls’ toilets,’ Henry says.

‘No offence, Dad,’ Henry says, ‘but unrequited love is just as shit in the morning as it is at night. Possibly worse, because you have a whole day ahead of you.’

‘They should just kill the victims of unrequited love,’ Henry says. ‘They should just take us out the second it happens.’

‘That would certainly thin the population,’ Michael says, as he tucks a blanket around him.

Henry calls me over. He beckons as I’m walking towards him, waving me down to face level when I arrive. His breath smells of beer. ‘I wish I’d gotten the letter.’

‘I missed you,’ he says, and then he kisses me on the mouth, before he falls back on the couch, asleep.

I don’t like admitting it, but I can feel Henry’s kiss all the way home. It was a drunken kiss, a mistaken kiss and he’s so out of it he probably thought he was kissing Amy, and I don’t like him anyway, but still, I think about it just the same.

I’ve parked and I’m sitting in the car, angry with myself for feeling it, and telling myself at the same time that it’s not my fault, telling myself that anyone would feel weird after a friend kissed them, when Rose walks out of the warehouse and gets into the passenger seat.

‘Me too,’ she says, and takes a breath. ‘So I called Gran. She suggested the value of compromise.’

‘Translated: she said you’re stubborn and you might try listening to other people once in a while?’

‘That’s quite close to how the conversation went, yes. I’d do anything for you,’ she says. ‘Even call my mother.’ She shifts around so she’s facing me. ‘Want some good news?’

‘We’ll blame Henry. For a guy with a wide vocabulary, he leans heavily on the word shit.’ I say. ‘Don’t think I’m not appreciative of the cleaning job, but I’ve decided to work at the bookstore.’

‘This is why I don’t have kids,’ she says, getting out of the car. ‘And remember, the offer of travel still stands.’

I lie in bed thinking about tonight, thinking about Henry and the kiss, which leads to thoughts I don’t want. Thoughts about Joel, the last person whose kiss meant something to me.

We met in Year 10, on the beach over the black rocks, where the sand is flat and unshifting. He was looking in the tide pools, and Cal went over to see what he was doing. I stayed to the side and watched Joel pointing things out to him. They were crouched by the pools for ages, Joel reading the tiny details of the beach – small shells housed in the rough texture of rocks.

I knew Joel from school, so I walked over eventually. I could feel his look on my skin. I’d spent years with Henry barely noticing I was a girl, and then there I was, visible to someone.

We kissed at a party later that year. Joel smiled and I knew what it meant. We went to a quiet place near the water. The moon was a floating yellow light. We stripped off our clothes and swam right through.

‘You can come back,’ he’d said on the night we broke up. ‘When things get better.’

I close my eyes tonight, and dream about Joel and the sand, about clouds and unstoppable rain. And Henry.

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Written on title page: Dear Sophia, for you, on the first day of our new life in the bookshop. See page 508, Michael

Markings on page 508

Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since, – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets.

Letter left between pages 508 and 509

12 January 2016

Michael

As you’re not returning my calls about the sale of the bookstore, and as you disappear when I stop by, it seems there’s no other way to talk but by letter. I hope that I have a better chance of reaching you through this book than through the ordinary postal service.

I’ve chosen to go with Bernadine and Saunders Real Estate. I rent my flat through them and I’m happy with the service.

The most likely buyers are developers who’ll want the building but not the business. Should we start running down the stock? Selling it to other stores when we can?

Please let me know what you think.

Sophia